Jeff Porter

Amidst all the noise and confusion leading up to the Super Bowl, there was a moment of silence. On all the TVs at bars and homes showing the game, Pepsi chose to air a 60-second commercial with no audio. The spot, entitled “Bob’s House,” features two Deaf men driving a car through a suburban neighborhood, looking for their friend’s house. Unsure of which house it is, they lay on the car’s horn and roll down the street, watching lights turn on in the houses as pestered residents peer out of their windows. When only one house on the street remains unresponsive, they know where to find their friend.

The first-time actor portraying the driver in the commercial is none other than RIT/NTID alum Darren Therriault, who received a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering in 1989. He then moved on to become an application configuration specialist at Pepsi, where he was given the opportunity to take part in “Bob’s House.”

In an interview with NTID News, Therriault stated, “I’m hoping [the commercial] will raise awareness for the whole deaf community; I’ve always wanted to do something like this.”

According to David Spiecker, Vice President of the NTID Student Congress (NSC), “The Pepsi ad was something of a milestone. It was something that made our culture and its idiosyncrasies known to a wider audience. It should have been something that every advocacy organization should have appreciated, because from there, the picture of deafness could be expanded.”

NTID Vs. Alexander Graham Bell

However, not everyone agreed with the commercial’s message of acceptance. The Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (AG Bell) President Karen Youdelman sent a letter to Julie Hamp, Senior Vice President of PepsiCo Communications before the spot even aired. In the letter, Youdelman states, “Your advertisement perpetuates a common myth that all people who are deaf can only communicate using sign language and are, therefore, isolated from the rest of society. In fact , today’s hearing technology, coupled with early screening identification and intervention, has led to incredible advances in listening and spoken language skill development.”

Many NTID students, including Spiecker, were outraged at the response from AG Bell. “When I first read the letter, I couldn’t stop shaking my head in disbelief,” says Spiecker, adding, “I really felt that [AG Bell was] nitpicking, if not picking a fight, at a time when we (all of the deaf people) should celebrate the ad. I can’t help but feel that the letter was written on impulse without proper consideration of a much larger group(s) of deaf people that they could be offending.”

More importantly, AG Bell’s stance has shed light on the history of a man that many members of the Deaf/HoH communities no longer wish to honor. A petition demanding the removal Alexander Graham Bell’s name and plaque from RIT’s Bell Hall dormitory recently acquired over 1,000 signatures. According to NTID Senator Scott Bailey, those signatures are more than enough to rename the dorm that resides near the Lyndon Baines Johnson building.

Bailey explains, “NTID is offended by [Alexander Graham] Bell, because he was a eugenicist, an oralist, and on the plaque in Bell Hall the last sentence says NTID follows [his] ideals, when we don’t. We deaf people use sign language mostly, not just oralism. We’re a diverse school.”

Robert Davila, Laurent Clerc, and George Veditz are all potential candidates to replace Bell, but, according to Bailey, the decision won’t be made until a future advisory board meeting with NTID Dean Dr. Alan Hurwitz.

Other Voices

Jeff Porter

Besides NTID, the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) replied to AG Bell’s letter, “We are disappointed with the negative tone of your letter and obvious lack of respect for deaf people who use ASL. We are also sensitive to the fact that many members of the AG Bell Deaf and Hard of Hearing section know and use ASL. We find it deplorable that AG Bell continues to perpetuate the myth that the use of ASL isolates deaf people from mainstream society, a stereotype that is far from the truth.”

The main objection to AG Bell is that they fail to teach or accept American Sign Language, opting instead for the exclusive use of auditory-verbal communication. One of the principles expressed on their website states that their mission is to “guide and coach parents to help their child use hearing as the primary sensory modality in developing spoken language without the use of sign language or emphasis on lipreading.”

NSC has since decided to draft and send a letter to PepsiCo, thanking them for airing “Bob’s House” and encouraging them to disregard the criticisms brought forward by AG Bell. AG Bell cites that the majority of the 30 or so million Americans living with hearing loss use spoken language as their primary mode of communication. However, an overwhelming amount of these people are elderly men and women who are hard of hearing and do not participate in Deaf culture, and that is the root of the debate: does culture (capital-D Deaf) supercede the inability to hear (little-d deaf)?

The prominent mentality on Deaf campuses such as NTID and Gallaudet is that being deaf is not a disability to be corrected, but a culture to be embraced. There is a certain degree of cultural tension between deaf individuals who use cochlear implants and deaf individuals who don’t. As Spiecker explains, “A difficult thing about deaf culture is that we’re essentially based on our hearing loss. If someone tries to restore hearing or assist hearing, it’s almost like saying, ‘I don’t want to be deaf.’ While this is often not the case, the small size of our culture makes us more protective of it.”

Bailey offers, “People who use cochlear implants use them to understand sound, get sound waves, etc. Deafness is a disability, yes, but I consider oralists who use cochlear implants equal.” Individual decisions are respected until groups or individuals start claiming that receiving cochlear implants is either right or wrong, such as AG Bell has done. No one wants to be told that they need to be “fixed.” (For more information on cochlear implants, see Cochlear Implants.)

As Spiecker asserts, “People who embrace assistive hearing technology sometimes frown on people who don’t because often they are the people who say, ‘I don’t need to talk to hearing people.’ You see divisions within the polar extremes of deafness. This conflict often expresses how it can be difficult to establish an identity that you feel comfortable with, and in what method you interact with the rest of the world. Those different factions within the deaf community are essentially people who feel strongly that their method of interacting with the world works and shouldn’t be encroached on.”

The Squeaky Wheel

“[…W]e have people here who are not afraid to be heard. At RIT/NTID, we have a safe community here where people are educated about deafness. This means that any objections or concerns raised by deaf people won’t be ignored,” explains Spiecker.

Jeff Porter

Bailey adds, “I think NTID is a proactive school, because we have been involved in several protests over last few years. For example, Lizzie Sorkin, our former SG President, wanted Respect from staff and faculty of NTID who wouldn’t sign in public places. That ended up in protests, and Dr. Hurwitz asked all staff to please sign in public places,” states Bailey. With such a track record of sticking up for themselves, the Deaf/HoH community constantly establishes themselves as the squeakiest wheel of RIT. With so many organized protests and political actions on their part, NTID has perhaps become the loudest college on campus (see sidebar).

As Spiecker puts it, “If people feel strongly about something, often a protest is the best way of earning sincere attention. The most important of all factors is that people have an invested interest in making a better place for everyone and actively pursue change.”